


Something Wicked

by BlueKiwi, LyraNgalia



Series: Murder on the Hogwarts Express [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Harry Potter AU, Marauders' Era, Potterlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueKiwi/pseuds/BlueKiwi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the night of a rare Christmas ball, Irene Adler comes across the enigma that is Remus Lupin. The problem is that she may have already figured out his most guarded secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Wicked

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with Josiah

Remus Lupin, despite his general affability, is not fond of crowds.

The door closes behind him, and the sounds of laughter, conversation, and music - a waltz now, apparently - become muffled behind Remus as he sneaks down the corridor, uncomfortably adjusting his dress robes. He didn't want to attend this ball - large groups in such close quarters had never sat well with him and with the full moon so close, his temper and nerves were already grating against each other terribly. His mood had been deteriorating in the past several days and while James and Sirius thought to keep their mouths shut, poor Peter had eventually been the one to pull Remus to the side and ask if he was going to even make it to the full moon if he kept biting everyone else's heads off in irritation.

And Remus, fighting a headache at the time, had thanked Peter for his concern but assured him that he was _fine_ and to please watch his wording next time. (Of course, the story had made its way back to Sirius and James anyway, and Sirius, although incredibly amused at Peter's gall, had warned him about Remus's very rare but extraordinarily memorable fits of rage. Remus had only sighed when he found out.)

His friends, thankfully, had been too preoccupied with Lily Evans tonight to notice him vanishing out the door. Hopefully, he'd be able to gather his wits about him - a moment or two of fresh air and silence was all he really needed. Besides, if Lily had anything to say about the matter, his friends were going to _need_ someone cool-headed to interject on their behalf.

 

It seems as if _not_ attending the ball, however, was the current fashion.

Irene is also not currently at the festivities in the Great Hall. She had found a few more interesting things to do, people to see, and now is making her way briskly back towards the ball, a very satisfied smile on her lips.

A smile that grows even more pleased as she sees who is walking away from the ball.

"Well now, this is a very pleasant surprise."

 

Remus is almost tempted to head back towards the Gryffindor dorms, to find a book and curl up in an alcove until Sirius, James, and Peter eventually come looking for him. He _had_ kept his promise to Sirius to at least stay for some of the party - the others can't fault him for ducking out early.

He is about to turn down the hallway the led back to the dorms when a familiar but unwelcome voice called out to him. He knows Irene Adler - her reputation is infamous enough that most people only whisper about the goings-on in Slytherin to their most trusted friends. She has a way, a lot of the other students say, of finding out your dearest secrets and baiting you with them. Remus personally never wanted to find out if this was true.

He stiffens and let out a long, slow sigh, briefly wishing that he had taken a different route. Still, his tone is nothing but polite when he replies, "Hello, Miss Adler."

 

Her dress robes manage to swirl intimidatingly and cling all at once as Irene nears, and Irene's smile grows predatory as she sees Remus stiffen, as he still manages to greet her politely. She answers with the same surface politeness, but there's an obvious undercurrent of amusement, of the potential for malice barely contained underneath.

"Mr. Lupin. You're not surrounded by your usual band of testosterone fueled protection," she says.

 

Remus's face slips into a neutral mask as she approaches, one he has long since mastered from the years of suspicion and discrimination. Irene Adler always asks too many questions, is always trying to find some sort of leverage to hold over someone. Most people know to avoid her, and Remus usually does...except when Irene, like some sort of hound on a trail, comes sniffing for secrets. He doesn't like it one bit.

"No, they do seem to be absent. If you're looking for them, they'll be at the party." That's clearly enough conversation for the night and he makes to move past her. "If you'll excuse me..."

 

Perhaps surprisingly, Irene steps back for him to go past. 

But as he moves past her, she notes, "Interesting that you'd invite me to go encounter your friends, Mr. Lupin. No doubt Mr. Black is three sheets to the wind by now and less-than-accurate with any curse he could aim." Her smile grows knife sharp, and her eyes are watchful. "Absolutely predatory of you, Remus, throwing your friends to the wolves."

 

He slows but does not quite stop, his jaw clenching. She's probably right about Sirius, especially if James is preoccupied with Lily. It's not as if Peter would be able to do something about it. In all honesty, the comment would not have bothered him - it was the truth, after all - if it had not been for that little side comments she added almost as an afterthought.

"The only predator here right now is you. If you're looking to dig up secrets, go sniff somewhere else."

 

"I'm flattered you think I'm quite so dangerous." She nods towards the Great Hall, where strains of music and the occasional laugh can still be heard through the doors. "And consider it simple curiosity. It's not often someone so obviously predatory tries so hard to hide what they are."

 

"It wasn't meant to be a compliment." He doesn't like the path this conversation is going down. He gives her a long look out of the corner of his eye and holds in with some difficulty a frustrated sigh. She doesn't know, he has to remind himself. It was bait, nothing more. "Contrary to your beliefs, I would think not everyone in the world would care to flaunt those attributes."

 

She doesn't have proof, which isn't the same as not knowing. Irene has strong enough suspicions that every opportunity talking to the Gryffindor student only seemed to confirm.

Like right now. She arches an eyebrow.

"So you don't bother denying it anymore. That's a good boy."

 

"Deny _what_?"

His tone is slowly edging from politeness to exasperation. He doesn't want to play these verbal games with her, not with his temper already alarmingly short. The part of him that is the Wolf howls with fury, wants to prove to the other student how dangerous dancing so close to this line is. He precariously keeps that other side in check - barely - from years of practice, and turns his back to her. "All I've said is that not everyone is like you, Miss Adler. There is some kindness left in the world."

 

"Who said anything about kindness?" She continues to study him, as if she can tell that he is near the breaking point as he shoves all that emotion back down. "You didn't deny having a predatory nature. Flaunting it is a matter of opinion."

 

His reply is dry and under any other circumstances, he may have been amused. "The lack of it currently being displayed is sad."

He feels her eyes on him and it makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He can feel that molten anger within him gradually begin to unravel and he knows if this continues, he's not going to be able to control it. He closes his eyes and lets out a slow, deliberate breath. He needs to walk away...but the Wolf is clamoring for his attention, brief red behind his vision that he can't quite block out. "This whole conversation is ridiculous. Goodnight, Irene."

 

She lets out a low, almost delighted laugh. As if she's gotten something out of the exchange.

"'Irene'? Aren't we getting personal now. I'd say the conversation is hitting a little close to home rather than being ridiculous."

 

The laugh, surprisingly, makes him - or is the Wolf? - bristle, but he manages not to snap at her. "Maybe for you. Again, find someone else to torment."

He begins to walk off, hoping that is the end of it and Irene can crow at her achievement in making him walk away. Already, pain starts to throb at his temples from holding back the temper that belongs to his lupine form. It's been a long night - a long week - and all he wants to do is rest somewhere quiet. He can't guarantee that he won't lose control if he stays.

 

She lets him take four, maybe five, steps away, in that time reaching into the folds of her robe to draw out her wand.

"How many people do you think can actually read a chart of moon phases in this school?" Her question is almost painfully casual, as if he isn't walking away. As if she doesn't already have a spell on her lips.

 

He stops dead in his tracks, frozen in despair by her words. His back is to her so she can't see the way blood drains from his face, the way his jaw clenches against the sudden rush of emptiness that floods his mind and his heart. In the darkened hallway, there is no sound at all except what feels like his own thunderous heartbeat in his ears, his sudden harsh and uneven breathing.

She _knows_. It was always a bloody trap, and he had walked right into it even knowing that...and if she of all people knows...

And suddenly the other half of him is screaming in fury and hatred so violent, it shoves his own conscious brutally and painfully to the side. It explodes from the chains he has tried to restrain it with, pure rage obliterating the constructs and turning them to ash. It shoves him back and drowns him in dark predatory wrath, whirling on Irene with a snarl.

 

He freezes, and she can tell by the set of his shoulders, the curve of his spine, that he is trying to restrain himself. Very, _very_ interesting. So she has hit the mark.

But then he turns on her and snarls, and Irene's wrist flicks, her wand pointed at him with Severus Snape's little jinx. She doesn't even have to speak the word.

_Levicorpus_.

 

Irene isn't the only student at Hogwarts who is proficient in nonverbal spells. Even as the rest of Remus's logical mind is smothered by the wolf's savagery, pure instinct unleashes magic, his wand growing hot in the folds of his robe. The spell slams into the counter-attack, sparks raining down onto the floor - unrestrained magic biting at the air and electrifying it.

And he doesn't stop moving. He launches himself at her, eyes boiling with murderous intentions. The wolf wants blood, and it won't stop until her neck is broken and her body lies limp and pale at his feet.

 

Irene is, in principle, not a fighter. She prefers it when she is able to have someone else do the dirty work while she holds their leash with a secret or three. That isn't to say she isn't proficient at dueling; that instinct was what had made her start slinging spells, most of them silent, after his initial counter.

She's forced to dive out of the way when he launches himself at her though, his eyes dark with a feral rage that swallowed up the too-considerate student. Over her shoulder as she dives, she aims another spell.

_Petrificus Totalus!_

 

His expression twists in a snarl and he ducks to the side, still impossibly fast, the spell missing him by a hairsbreadth and getting caught up his robes. They billow out behind him, the spell starkly lighting up the hallway in a pale blue light. 

But he doesn't stop moving - even as Irene dives, he's skirting in on her unprotected side, reaching out to grab her arm and throw her to the ground. The Wolf sniffs out any weaknesses, and only sees her as one thing.

Not a predator. Not a she-wolf equal to him.

_Prey_.

 

The night isn't going that well for James Potter. First, he had to spend five minutes convincing Sirius that they really couldn't afford to get in trouble again for spiking the punch (and he was sure that Snape would've ratted them out anyway, that bloody sniffling tosser). Then, he had to spend the next half hour trying to get Peter to dance except Peter was far too intimidated to even ask the shyest girl in the Hall and had eventually fled to a corner to nurse his embarrassment with a glass of the non-spiked punch.

Finally, when James had finally been able to spot Lily Evans to ask her to dance, she was already in the arms of that insufferable, knock-kneed, pasty-faced, woefully unamusing prat, Archie Pinch. Even worse, Sirius had already disappeared in a crowd of giggling girls, and James had no one to complain to.

So it is with a sigh and furrowed brow that he escapes the party. He needs to walk around, clear his head, and hopefully by the time he returns, Lily might be willing to dance with him...

He is about to pass a seldom-used corridor when he heard what sounds like a scuffle and he briefly sees a flash of bluish-white light. Curiosity gets the better of it and he turns, jogging down the hallway to see what dumb Fourth Years decided to get into a fight in the middle of-

He stops, blinking. For a second, he doesn't quite believe what he's seeing. But then, instinct floods him and he snatches his wand from an inner pocket of his formal robes, brandishing it at both his friend and that bint Irene Adler.

_Immobulus_!

 

When his hand closes on her arm, a look of genuine fear appears on Irene's face, and her grip on her wand tightens. Another spell is on her lips, one from the darker books in the Slytherin dungeons' private library.

_Cr--_

Before she can finish the spell, she is hit by another, a full body bind that hits her like ice. The only thought that comes to mind is that she hopes the spell had hit Lupin as well.

 

He sees the sudden fear in her eyes, and the Wolf within him howls in victory. His lips draw back from his teeth in a vicious grin, and he lunges-

The red rage encompassing his vision blinds him to everything else - he never senses James's sudden appearance or the spell that wraps around him like a chokehold. He stumbles, his grip on Irene gone and crashes to the floor in a sprawl.

 

James doesn't have the time to breathe a sigh of a relief as the spell catches them both off guard. He jogs up to them cautiously, wand still out and kept leveled at the two of them.

"What's all this now? Remus?"

His mind is working a mile a minute and he's not liking the answers he's coming up with. If he's right, his friend is in no condition to speak, but the other option is talking to Irene Adler. He'd much rather converse with the wolf.

 

Either because the spell hit them both or because it had been cast hastily, the freezing charm is not as total as Irene would have expected, and she manages to roll her eyes at the question. She is still mostly frozen, and the only thing she manages is a strangled noise from a frozen throat.

"Mmmgh."

Translation: _How do you expect any answers at all with both of us frozen, you twit?_

 

He lays stunned on the ground, still breathing heavily and otherwise immobile. The Wolf paces restlessly - it can smell him now, sense his uncertainty. If he could move, he would go for this throat, rip him to shreds, piece by piece, bone by bone...

But for some reason, this scent is...strangely familiar...

 

James gives Irene a scathing look that clearly says that he know what she is trying to get at. He sidesteps her, although he still keeps a wary eye on her, to crouch next to Remus. He puts a hand on his friend's shoulder cautiously, wondering how far gone he is. He knows Remus's temper runs short the closer to the full moon it is, but this... this is unprecedented.

"Remus? Moony, it's _me_."

He doesn't like that blank look of feral rage in his friend's eyes. He cuts a quick, furious look at Irene - what in the world had she done?

 

Irene rolls her eyes again, and focuses her attention on the Freezing Charm that's still got her in its hold. She concentrates, holding a counterspell in her mind, and wills it mentally. An anemic spark of white flares from her wand and dies. Not nearly enough to bind her completely, but it allows Irene to move everything above her shoulders, and she works her jaw carefully as she watches the two.

The fear is gone from her eyes, replaced by her usual cold, arch amusement.

"Heartwarming."

 

He wants to leap at the sound of this other one's voice, can smell blood pumping through veins that were so close. This one is trapping him, as if he were the hunter instead. A growl bubbles up from his throat as his muscles switch, trying to uncoil and spring at the other one. Must kill, must hunt, must-

The name stops him cold.

The faint spark of recognition from before suddenly ignites, flooding his memory and his senses with such ferocity, it leaves him gasping and suddenly he's Remus Lupin again. Not the werewolf, not the monster, but just a Hogwarts student...being restrained by one of his best friends, his intended victim only a few feet away. The color drains from his face, leaving him alarmingly pale and shaking, and for several minutes it looks as if he's going to be violently ill.

"No..."

 

It looks as if he's gotten through to his friend although from what he sees, the consequences of what's just happened are going to be anything but good. He keeps a firm grip on Remus's shoulder, glancing from him to Irene and back, slowly putting the pieces together. The collective picture that is starting to emerge is ugly, and James's temper slowly begins to burn.

The moment Irene decides to speak, James snaps the wand in her direction, glaring. "You are an _idiot_ , did you know that?"

 

Her eyes are quick, sharp, and watchful as she takes in the way the rage drains from Remus Lupin's face to be replaced by a more familiar expression of realization and then an utterly predictable mewling horror.

Irene arches an eyebrow at James brandishing his wand, still utterly unable to move.

"Certainly nowhere near as idiotic as the ones who let the pup slip his leash."

 

He doesn't hear either of them arguing. The only sounds he can heard are his too-fast gulps of breath and the pounding of his heartbeat, thunderous in the quiet of the corridor. His fear and anger and guilt threaten to choke him - how could he have been so stupid? Worse, if James hadn't come when he did, Irene would be dead.

And he'd be a monster in human form.

He flinches away from James's touch and somehow manages to rise shakily to his feet, still far too pale. Is this how it's going to be? Under duress, could he really snap so easily and turn into a bloodthirsty beast even without the moon at its fullest? He thought he had long since been able to control the wolf side of him, to keep it calm until it came raging forth during the full moon. Maybe he had been wrong - he had been so bloody confident in himself, he had become complacent.

"I'm sorry." His voice is barely a whisper and suddenly he feels as if he's suffocating. Not far away are dozens of victims...prey...his fellow students. He can feel the pressure of the school suddenly weigh down on him, a collar around his throat. He doesn't know who he's apologizing to, but everything is rushing around in his head and he knows he can't do this. "I'm sorry. I-"

He gives James a despairing, humiliated look and then he takes off running. He can't stay here. He has to go somewhere, anywhere but here. He should have known. He should have _known_.

How foolish of him to have thought it would ever be different.

 

James scowls. He had almost forgotten why he hated Irene Adler, and here she is, quickly parroting every single reason why James dreamed that she would end up in the darkest, filthiest cell in Azkaban (although sometimes he wouldn't even wish her on the prisoners within the infamous prison).] "You're not nearly as smart as you think you are."

But before he can think of an appropriate spell that might get her to shut up for more than a year, Remus - that familiar ashamed look clear on his face - has bolted down the hallway despite James's cry of protest. He is left standing in the middle of the wall, one witch still half-frozen on one side and a rapidly disappearing friend on the other. He has an idea where Remus is going, but chances are the only one of them that would be able to speak to him now is Sirius. _Dammit_.

He turns back on Irene, a dark look in his eyes.

 

She speaks the counterspell, and the Freezing Charm unraveled against her skin like paper. Irene barely gives Remus Lupin (now wasn't that appropriate) a look as he runs off, clearly, obviously choking on his own guilt. That'll be useful, assuming he doesn't disappear from the school with his tail between his legs. She picks herself up and dusts off her robes with a pale hand before arching an eyebrow at James.

"Not going to run fruitlessly after your friend, Potter? You'll have a much more successful run of it than if you are waiting for me to swoon over your timely rescue."

 

James only stares at her. How it is possible for one person to be so ruthlessly cold is beyond him, and he knows if Sirius were standing in his place, the Black blood would cause him to rip Irene to shreds, consequences be damned. But James is of a different sort and slowly the anger melts from his face. The only thing to stay is the disgust, the irritation, and... something like pity. 

But he doesn't reply to the taunt. He only shakes his head, turns on his heel, and walks away. It is too late to deal with what Irene Adler knows. Now it is time to repair what has been torn asunder and hope that the damage isn't irreversible.


End file.
